MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Film round-up: June 20, 2024
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Green Border, Fancy Dance, Before Dawn and The Exorcism
PAWNS IN A BRUTAL GAME: Jalal Altawil in Green Border
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Green Border (15)
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
★★★★★
IN this, worldwide refugee week, comes a timely and powerful yet harrowing immigration drama which takes a fresh look at the migration crisis in Europe as it weighs up the inhumanity refugees face against the compassion.
Shot in black and white, three-times Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland pulls no punches in this brutally tough-to-watch drama which takes place in the no man’s land between Belarus and Poland. also known as the “green border.”
This narrative fiction explores the issue via the stories of a Syrian family who are heading to Sweden via Poland, Julia (Maja Ostaszewska) a 50-year-old therapist newly turned activist, and Jan (Tomasz Wlosok) a border guard whose wife is expecting their first child.
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